[buddypress-dev] Data Portability and Microformats

Thu Apr 3 05:13:13 GMT 2008

I agree with you Joseph.  Many of the larger social silos tend to
treat your blog as just another feed for their system.  Instead your
blog should be the heart of your social network and your online
identity.  In addition, I think that users are getting sick of
recreating a new profile every time they join a new site.  I think
there is an amazing opportunity here for Wordpress to provide this
functionality.

Currently there are a few plugins that enable lifestreaming:
http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2006/12/14/lifestream-wp-plugin-for-wordpress/
http://kierandelaney.net/blog/projects/simplelife/
http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/rss-stream/
I think these plugins provide excellent examples of how your blog
might serve as the heart of your online identity.

The next step would be to provide distributed Friend functionality.
Currently, we can use FOAF or XFN to distribute a blog roll.  It would
be really cool if your blog could have a 'friend request' button.
Pressing that would ask for the requestor's blog url (which is an
OpenID) which would then initiate an exchange that would allow the
friend request to be approved and then a relationship to be
established.   Those relationships could then be added to your blog
roll and then used to manage permissions.  Imagine being able to post
to your  blog and only allow friends with a given relationship the
right to see the post.  This would also lead to friendfeed like
functionality.  You would be able to see the activities of your
friends and perhaps even add it to a public page on your blog.  Your
blog would of course respect your friend's privacy settings.  The next
interesting addition would be the ability to make comments on anything
coming through that stream.  Their comments would then be distributed
back out so that friends could engage in an interesting, distributed
conversation based on any data they are generating in Flickr,
delicious, twitter, etc.  It would be nice if your blog could parse
Microformat encoded data embedded in your and your friend's feeds and
then distribute that back out as ical for your calendar and add the
data to your contact lists.

I wrote a couple of posts on this topic:
http://www.justinball.com/2008/03/04/note-to-facebook-myspace-and-other-social-silos-die/
http://www.justinball.com/2008/03/06/social-wordpress/

BuddyPress means there will be a truly open source social platform and
since Wordpress is so popular BuddyPress has a great users base to
build on.  This will allow thousands of niche networks to develop.  It
would be really cool if when joining a BuddyPress based community
instead of getting a new blog you could optionally use your existing
blog as your profile.  (It would still be important for users to be
able to sign up without a blog and get a profile on the site.)  If the
community site requires extra metadata it could request it from the
blog and the user could provide it - from within their blog.  Then if
they need to update the data they only need to update it in their
blog.  The BuddyPress community site could also request access to the
user's larger set of data - from flickr, delicious, etc.

I would love to see the BuddyPress ecosystem include a  plugin for
individual blogs that let's an individual user easily create groups
and invite their friends to join:
http://www.justinball.com/2008/03/05/disposable-communities/
http://www.justinball.com/2008/03/05/connected-communities/

Sorry to be long winded.  I think that Wordpress stands to really
change the social networking / community software space.  BuddyPress
is an exciting development.

Justin

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:19 PM, Joseph Scott <joseph at randomnetworks.com> wrote:
>
>  On Apr 2, 2008, at 5:21 PM, Andy Peatling wrote:
>
>
> > One thing I haven't added to the BuddyPress site yet is how we are going
> to handle data portability.
> >
> > This is a fairly hefty topic and I've heard a wide range of different
> ideas. I'm not completely set on an absolute direction for BuddyPress in
> this area yet. It is however something that is very important, and much
> needed in the social networking space.
> >
> > These are my thoughts so far after having discussions with various people:
> >
> > - Data needs to be as easy to get out as it is to put in.
> >
> > - Sharing of data between BuddyPress installations should be as easy. You
> should be able to pull in data from one BuddyPress installation for use in
> other installations.
> >
> > - There is no central information "hub" with BuddyPress. The DiSo project
> envisions using a basic WordPress installation as a place where you add your
> information to share with other networks. What if BuddyPress could utilize
> this, and pull in as much information from this source as possible when you
> first register? A BuddyPress installation could periodically check this
> source and ask if you wanted to import new information.
> >
> > - The use of Microformats when rendering information so that it can be
> utilized by other non BuddyPress sources.
> >
> > - The ability to completely export all of your data in 'X' format.
> >
> > - The use of Gravatar to implement a shared profile picture library across
> all networks.
> >
> > - The ability to finely tune privacy settings, and the creation of data
> access level groups. This would give you the ability to pick and choose the
> amount of data available to specific sites.
> >
> > Lets discuss this area in more detail. I really want to hear people's
> thoughts and ideas on how we can make BuddyPress as distributed and open as
> possible.
> >
>
>
>  In my ideal world I'd be able to manage all of my profile/social data in
> WordPress with fine grained control over who can do what with the data.
> Similar to the way the Flickr application authorization works, it would be
> nice to have LinkedIn (just one example) contact my blog asking for data.  I
> can then approve it and specifically list what data it can read and write.
> Instead of polling for new data, LinkedIn would be able to push updates
> (that I've authorized) back to my blog.
>
>  And there's no reason why this would need to be a one way thing.  If I
> change something in my profile that I've granted LinkedIn read access to, no
> reason why I shouldn't just push that data out to LinkedIn.
>
>  This doesn't have to be limited to traditional profile data either.  The
> social graph data could also be passed back and forth.  If someone who only
> uses LinkedIn makes a contact request in LinkedIn and I approve it, that
> "relationship" could be pushed back to my blog (assuming I allowed LinkedIn
> to do that).
>
>  I used LinkedIn as an example because many people are familiar with it, but
> in this scenario WordPress could not only be a profile/social data server,
> but a client as well.  My WordPress blog could contact Bob asking for
> access.  Bob can then approve my blog and specify which data I can read or
> write and I can do the same on my blog.  This way when I change my email
> address, my blog goes out and tells Bob's blog about this change and vice
> versa (assuming both blogs had the correct permissions to do so).  A
> decentralized profile/social data network.
>
>  Fine grained access settings is a major feature here.  I might want to
> share my mobile phone number with Bob, but not LinkedIn.
>
>  --
>  Joseph Scott
>  joseph at randomnetworks.com
>  http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/
>
>
>
>
>
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